Asahi Breweries

Deutsche Brauerei was founded in 1737 and has been in the Schweitzer family for 12 generations. The company produces quality beer and has won awards over the years and is owned entirely by 16 uncles, aunts and cousins. In 1998, Deutsche Brauerei expanded into Ukraine. Despite the Russian debt crisis, the popularity of Deutsche’s beer increased its sales greatly and within three years of launch, Ukrainian consumers accounted for 28% of Deutsche’s sales. Furthermore, most of the unit growth in sales during that time period was also contributed by Ukraine. In an attempt to market the beer even more aggressively, Lukas hired Oleg Pinchuk, a marketing guy who understood the Ukrainian markets and had previous experience of

The Boston Beer Company, Inc., founded in 1984, is a leading brewer in United States, offering wide variety of high quality full-flavored, handcraftedbeers. It is distinctive due to the time-honored recipe of brewing and authentic, consistent quality of alcoholic beverages. Samuel Adams Boston Lager is the pride of BBC, regular handcrafted beer “stands for quality, inner self-worth, authenticity, and unique New England or Yankee toughness” ( Martin Roper, Chief Operating Officer). Unfortunately, the company experienced the failure of conquering light beer segment

Boston Beer, in response to consumers’ preference changes to more flavorful and bitter tasting brews, was founded in 1894. Boston Beer implements a “quality at any cost” strategy with a strong emphasis on product differentiation and implementing quality ingredients into its products. For instance, Boston Beer was the first company to employ a stamped freshness date on its bottles and ingredients are imported from around the world. Additionally, Boston Beer relies heavily on contract brewing to gain competitive advantages. Boston Beer’s contract brewing strategy results in lower overhead and transportation costs, as well as

New Belgium brewery has increasingly grew throughout the years since their development in 1991. Despite the dominance of the “Big Three” (Budweiser, Miller, and Coors), NBB needs to be aggressive and strive to invest in the attractive beer industry in able to grow more. If positioned correctly, NBB and its main brand, Fat Tire, can continually grow. An evaluation of the industry, the business itself, its brands, and the customers and competitors is needed in order to be continuously successful.

Competitive brewers will introduce newer styles of beers to meet beer drinkers’ new preferences, more specifically lighter beers. However, both styles will be kept under the same brand

In the summer of 2008, InBev NV, a Belgian-based brewing company formed from the merger of InterBrew and AmBev, offered a bid of $46.6 billion to acquire Anheuser-Busch Co to create the world’s largest brewing company at $65 a share. The initial offer was subsequently declined in part because the company felt the offer undervalued the company greatly. InBev later increased their offer to $70 a share and in Mid-July, Anheuser-Busch accepted the offer making the total cost of the deal $54.8 billion dollars. The issue then becomes whether the offer of $70 is justifiable to InBev’s shareholders. The merger brings about two different management styles. The culture at InBev focused on extreme cost-cutting measures and profitable incentive-based compensation programs. However, Anheuser-Busch’s culture differed in that they prided itself on philanthropy, diversity, and community involvement. In addition, this company possessed many luxurious offices and corporate fleet of aircrafts. Furthermore, they invested heavily in advertising, derived most of their profits in the United States, and possessed a lackluster international expansion plan. Issues the financial managers face will be differing business philosophies in regards to marketing (“Grow/Defend/Maintain/Cash” matrix approach vs the large marketing budget of Anheuser-Busch), culture (cost cutting measures vs company perks), and the future of the twelve

As the world’s largest brewer, AB Inbev has the ability to compete in new and foreign markets as a strong threat. Due to their enormous capital and expansion-based strategy, they can enter any market as a challenger and shutdown competition to become the leading brewer in this market. As an aggregated note we can also see this in domestic or already dominated markets because due to economics of scale they can achieve differentiated products at a low cost.

     In this paper I will be talking about the U.S. beer industry and in short an overview of the brewing industry worldwide. I will talk about the barriers to entry, economies of scale, government intervention, pricing, current market trends, product differentiation, and imports. The focus being mainly on the U.S. brewing industry oligopoly. The U.S. brewing industry has three major players: Anheuser-Busch, SAB Miller, and Coors/Molson. Anheuser-Busch is currently the largest brewer in the world, producing over 100 million barrels a year. Anheuser-Busch currently owns over 50% of the market in the United States, with Miller trailing behind at 20% and Coors at about 11% with the rest of the market occupied by imports and craft breweries. When analyzing any industry, how easy it is for newcomers to enter the market is a great importance. If there are high barriers to entry

Introduction: Corona Beer, produced in Mexico by Grupo Modelo since 1922, entered the United States beer market in 1979, and by 2007, was the number one imported beer in the United States (with 1.9% market share of the global beer industry) having recently taken that position from Heineken, a rival (with 1.6% market share of the global beer industry). Corona used a broad differentiation strategy with a “fun in the sun” marketing image. It also achieved strategic success by using a distinctive glass bottle and providing a light-tasting beer that attracted a broader market.

Boston Beer Company (BBC) has enjoyed much success with their craft beers with Samuel Adams as their main focus. Being the leader of this segment, overtopping five of their competitors combined (Exhibit 1), the company now must decide how to take advantage of the light beer market. Boston Lightship, their current light beer, had been a small contributor in BBC’s product line. Currently, it is facing dwindling sales with product volumes down from 12 000 cases per month to 3000 cases per month.

The author chooses t0 write the report about Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light because it is the best-selling beer in the world. In this report the author has outlined in detail the current status by using the SWOT and PESTLE analysis of the company Anheuser-Busch

Rivalry in the craft beer industry is high and in addition to the excise tax and overall high manufacturing cost have promoted mergers and acquisitions in order to consolidate and globalize the industry. Anheuser-Busch InBev merged with Belgium-based Inbev as one of the major transactions in 2008, forming Anheuser-Busch InBev. Heineken (HEINY) another major brewer, acquired the beer business of FEMSA in 2010. As in 2013, Anheuser- Busch InBev one of the market leaders acquired Grupo Modelo, Mexican brewer. In the following year 2014, Anheuser- Busch InBev reacquire Oriental Brewery, South Korea brewer. (Sharon Bailey) The acquisitions combined their market share and currently owns 41.2 percent of the US market.(Statista)

ABInBev is a multinational beverage and brewing company based in Belgium. It is the largest brewer in the world with a 20.8% market share (Statista, 2016) and is also one of the world’s top five consumer goods companies.

Hirotaro Higuchi (the protagonist), and CEO of Asahi Breweries, Ltd. must decide if he should increase its production and packaging capacity to meet the supply demands of their distributors, due to the company’s recent developments in the beer industry. Asahi Breweries has launched and seized a huge section of the dry beer market, ensuing from sales growth of 71.9% in comparison to the industry’s growth of 7.6%. A proposal has been made for, increasing their production capacity to 2,100,000 kiloliters to accommodate the recent shortages to their distributors. He has suggested an investment proposal plan of 230 billion yen within two years (1989 to 1990), to increase their brewing and packaging capacity by 30%. Hirotaro Higuchi must decide if he will welcome or dismiss this proposal. “Guiding change may be the ultimate test of a leader- no business survives over the long term if it can’t reinvent itself” (Kotter, 2007).

Asahi Breweries’ market performance in the past three years had amazed the Japanese business community. Being a marginal player before 1986, the company had recorded an increase of 71.9% beer sales volume in 1988 while the whole industry grew only 7.6%. At the same period, the company’s market share grew from 10.5% to 20.6%. The company’s current flagship product is its Super Dry beer, a revolutionary beer with an appealing and a distinct sharp taste. Accordingly, Asahi’s competitors have also moved into the dry beer market and attempted to capitalize the surprising profitable opportunity. Thus, Asahi has encountered many challenges resulted from the high growth rate of sales and emerging competition. Asahi’s capital infrastructures and